I paid for the game, I bind it to my battle.net account which has 4-5 other games on. I can log in and play whenever I want with no restrictions. No install limits, nothing. I can sell my account with all the games bound to it. Or create multiple battle.net accounts one per game and sell them seperately. There's no DRM/DLC or crap like that being pushed by other companies.
How is that different from Stardock's Impulse or Valve's Steam? or hell, SecuROM for that matter?
If you count a simple restriction of a login to prove the account you logged in with at some point legally bought the game (note the person using the account didn't have to buy it, you could lend it to a friend, or whatever). Then you've missed the point.
Again, how is that different from any of the other DRM schemes on the market other than Ubisoft's? they all work as Install -> Login -> Play, every problem we've had with DRM so far relates to the usefulness of the product when you're unable to finish the "Login" part, and Battle.net doesn't seem any better than what we had before (ie, no login -> useless product).
Depends. How are the makers of other luxury items doing right now? IIRC its fairly typical during a crisis for luxury items to do relatively well, the ones hit the hardest are usually the middle and poor classes, and they aren't the biggest consumers of luxury items. Though IANAEconomist so dunno, you should ask one if you want a better answer.
Yeah, small miracle that a prominent member of the Board of Directors for the world's largest media conglomerate would get media companies to sell their music online through his new service.
Only marginally less shocking than the news of guys behind Bing getting the MSN portal to use their search service.
So... Amazon got first and only dibs to specific songs, thus restricting competition, and Apple is using monopoly power to tell music distributors not to do that?
Yeah. Since Amazon doesn't hold a controlling share of the digital music market, they're free to do that. Apple isn't.
Kinda how Apple is able to shove their browser and video player down your throat when you install their music player, but Microsoft can't bundle IE with Windows.
IANAL, but while it doesn't have to come with the binary per se I believe it *does* have to come from the same person that's redistributing the work, ie Apple themselves.
Your experienced, skilled tailor likely isn't a billionaire like whoever owns the Gucci brand, but I'd bet he makes a fairly decent living. Which is all we should worry about to be honest, industries don't live by their superstars, they live by their regular people making a good living from honest work.
And Tablet PCs failed because I've never, *ever* seen one priced below the level of a high-end notebook. I've heard there's some in the US, if you're willing to spend two days finding one online and then masquerading as a small business to buy it, but in the rest of the world your options are between "sell one kidney" and "sell both".
When an Apple product is the *cheap* alternative, you know you're doing something very, very wrong.
As with everything, YMMV though. Personally I can't stand Brasero's UI, and feel K3B is too bloated for my poor, old laptop so yeah, I use Nero Linux on it. Runs smoothly, works great and it even works as a CD ripper in a pinch.
Perhaps the Windows version is still the bloated hog that I remember from so many years ago, but the Linux version at least is incredible and well worth its money.
So do I, but that's why I got a regular, cheap phone instead. If you're buying a Smartphone then treating it as a mere appliance, well, I'm sorry but you're doing it wrong.
If we define "winning" or "losing" based on marketshare (and, therefore, control of the market), yeah, it does.
And if we define it by profits, then the only kind of comparison that makes any sense, from an user's POV, is whether they're making or losing money, to see the chances of them being around next year. And in that respect they're all 'winning', but comparing market cap and such BS that'd only matter to a large investor stinks of "my daddy is bigger than your daddy!".
Well, if the content was good (see also: Asimov's Foundation) we'd get more content every other year, and if the content sucked (see also: Star Wars movies) we'd get the parts that didn't suck into the Public Domain available to all. It's a win/win scenario.
Yeah, too bad neither the Amiga nor the Lisa were ever relevant outside the US. Macs only began to be noticeable on a global scale in the System 7 era, which was posterior to Win3.x, and the Amiga, Commodore and other smaller players never became worthy of mention until the day they died.
X11 is kinda sorta more arguable, as SCO (the old one, not the jackass) did a fairly good job of selling its version of Unix to enterprises but I don't recall ever seeing one running X11, probably because it was sold as a separate add-on according to Wikipedia.
Also, "I think we've corrected the imbalance we've had in the past and now have our curriculum headed straight down the middle." I don't know if what they have is "straight down the middle", but to me, any correction the other way is a good thing after 140 years of liberal guidance.
Not really. Thing is, you're assuming these "liberals" that "injected their view" previously were far-left extremists. They weren't even close. In fact, by most of the world's recognition they were at best "mild conservatives" so a correction the other way would've been to push a true liberal agenda, this turn towards hardcore fundamentalism only exacerbates the problem that already existed beforehand.
In most of the world I'm categorized as a right-wing conservative, yet in the US I'd likely be labeled a "capitalism-hating socialist" for my political views. You there have Mussolini in one side and Hitler on the other, the middle ground between them is still fascism. What you need to look for is a middle ground on a *global* scale, but that lies to the left of your left, not to your right.
and Nero (If you paid for it, your a sucker) was very cute too!
If you paid for a Mac, you're a bigger sucker than he could ever be.
I have nothing at all against Linux. I am simply a realist. I have continuously used Linux since I first installed SLS in 1992. I have deployed thousands of Linux servers and have tried every single distribution that people thought could be a real desktop alternative.
And I've developed a cure for cancer in my basement. Sorry, but your post stink of Apple-zealot hipster so unless you start showing some actual knowledge befitting your alleged experience, that's exactly how I (and everbody else) will see you as.
The problem isn't the FOSS code, its everything else. Compare, for instance, the steps required to have your Windows machine look like OSX vs that of having your OSX machine look like Windows.
The reason most people call OSX a closed system is that, to get something as customizable as your average Windows or Linux install you need to throw away everything that makes OSX OSX, so in the end you're left with only a half-assed BSD fork you had to pay $129 for.
Google says it holds certain patents on the VP8 video codec that is part of WebM but there's no assurance that Google's patents are the only patents required. What about patents that third parties could assert? While it appears to be a nice gesture if a major player releases software on open source terms, it's imperative to perform a well-documented patent clearance.
I may offend you for saying this, but... please stop spreading FUD. The phrasing of your post implies (and at times outright states) that this situation is exclusive to VP8. It's not. Everything, and I do mean everything non-trivial is liable for patent infringement. VP8, h.264, the Linux kernel, MS Outlook and even the presentation app I'm writing in my spare time, as long as it's large enough to be patentable there's a good chance that somebody, somewhere, holds a patent similar enough to it that a technophobe judge would judge in their favor in a patent lawsuit.
Asking for Google or any other OSS company to perform a "patent clearance" is simply unrealistic, and the part of your post that stinks of FUD the most. If you want (as many of us do) the safety of mind of knowing that your work will never be threatened by a patent troll with an axe to grind, there's only one path for you regardless of the technology you choose: support the efforts of those trying to abolish software patents, in the US and anywhere else they may pop up. Otherwise you'll always be at risk.
Unfortunately the patent system is so broken there just is no way to authoritatively declare anything patent-free.
There's two ways: one, make your work trivial enough to be unpatentable ("Hello, World!" for instance). Second, build your product then wait 20 years before publishing it to ensure that it is, by itself, prior art for any valid patent over it.
Of course neither is a practical choice in the real world, but then again MPEG-LA didn't pay their senators for nothing.
Ya this attitude of "Something should have tons of features but no bloat," has always confused me. There seem to be far too many technical people who think that you should be able to have software with all the features in the world, yet that takes up only a tiny sliver of memory and disk space.
Well, that's because you're misunderstanding their argument slightly. What they want, actually, is "a program that has all the features I need and none I don't".
Which is a perfectly reasonable request, of course, as long as you're willing to write it for yourself. People are quick to forget that if you stick four people in a room for half an hour you'll end up with five different opinions, and the same happens when trying to decide which features are "necessary" and which ones are "bloat".
Personally, my needs are fairly spartan so I generally prefer light tools over heavier ones, which is why I've been using Midori and Arora for browsing rather than Firefox or Chrome. My ideal browser, of course, would drop support for HTML3.2 and previous and be a *lot* more anal about invalid HTML but then again I'm too lazy to code it myself so I make do with what I have.
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I paid for the game, I bind it to my battle.net account which has 4-5 other games on. I can log in and play whenever I want with no restrictions. No install limits, nothing. I can sell my account with all the games bound to it. Or create multiple battle.net accounts one per game and sell them seperately. There's no DRM/DLC or crap like that being pushed by other companies.
How is that different from Stardock's Impulse or Valve's Steam? or hell, SecuROM for that matter?
If you count a simple restriction of a login to prove the account you logged in with at some point legally bought the game (note the person using the account didn't have to buy it, you could lend it to a friend, or whatever). Then you've missed the point.
Again, how is that different from any of the other DRM schemes on the market other than Ubisoft's? they all work as Install -> Login -> Play, every problem we've had with DRM so far relates to the usefulness of the product when you're unable to finish the "Login" part, and Battle.net doesn't seem any better than what we had before (ie, no login -> useless product).
Depends. How are the makers of other luxury items doing right now? IIRC its fairly typical during a crisis for luxury items to do relatively well, the ones hit the hardest are usually the middle and poor classes, and they aren't the biggest consumers of luxury items. Though IANAEconomist so dunno, you should ask one if you want a better answer.
Yeah, small miracle that a prominent member of the Board of Directors for the world's largest media conglomerate would get media companies to sell their music online through his new service.
Only marginally less shocking than the news of guys behind Bing getting the MSN portal to use their search service.
So... Amazon got first and only dibs to specific songs, thus restricting competition, and Apple is using monopoly power to tell music distributors not to do that?
Yeah. Since Amazon doesn't hold a controlling share of the digital music market, they're free to do that. Apple isn't.
Kinda how Apple is able to shove their browser and video player down your throat when you install their music player, but Microsoft can't bundle IE with Windows.
IANAL, but while it doesn't have to come with the binary per se I believe it *does* have to come from the same person that's redistributing the work, ie Apple themselves.
Your experienced, skilled tailor likely isn't a billionaire like whoever owns the Gucci brand, but I'd bet he makes a fairly decent living. Which is all we should worry about to be honest, industries don't live by their superstars, they live by their regular people making a good living from honest work.
But having the choice not to have the choice to choose is still giving you more choice than you'd have without it! or something.
And Tablet PCs failed because I've never, *ever* seen one priced below the level of a high-end notebook. I've heard there's some in the US, if you're willing to spend two days finding one online and then masquerading as a small business to buy it, but in the rest of the world your options are between "sell one kidney" and "sell both".
When an Apple product is the *cheap* alternative, you know you're doing something very, very wrong.
Bleh, Emacs is already at version 23. Take that, Microsoft!
Note: if you're thinking of replying "Emacs isn't a web browser!", you clearly have never used Emacs.
As with everything, YMMV though. Personally I can't stand Brasero's UI, and feel K3B is too bloated for my poor, old laptop so yeah, I use Nero Linux on it. Runs smoothly, works great and it even works as a CD ripper in a pinch.
Perhaps the Windows version is still the bloated hog that I remember from so many years ago, but the Linux version at least is incredible and well worth its money.
And when you buy at Hot Topic you're not buying clothes, you're buying an image.
So do I, but that's why I got a regular, cheap phone instead. If you're buying a Smartphone then treating it as a mere appliance, well, I'm sorry but you're doing it wrong.
If we define "winning" or "losing" based on marketshare (and, therefore, control of the market), yeah, it does.
And if we define it by profits, then the only kind of comparison that makes any sense, from an user's POV, is whether they're making or losing money, to see the chances of them being around next year. And in that respect they're all 'winning', but comparing market cap and such BS that'd only matter to a large investor stinks of "my daddy is bigger than your daddy!".
Well, if the content was good (see also: Asimov's Foundation) we'd get more content every other year, and if the content sucked (see also: Star Wars movies) we'd get the parts that didn't suck into the Public Domain available to all. It's a win/win scenario.
For you. For 99% of the world's population however, Youtube's default resolution is quite acceptable.
Guess which market Google is aiming at.
And loose all your users. They are in your 'Backwards" direction.
Having your users loose in your backwards direction does not sound pleasant. I mean, I can understand one or two at a time, but all of them?
I have a newfound respect for all of you, F/OSS developers. Way to sacrifice yourself for the masses, in more ways than one.
Yeah, too bad neither the Amiga nor the Lisa were ever relevant outside the US. Macs only began to be noticeable on a global scale in the System 7 era, which was posterior to Win3.x, and the Amiga, Commodore and other smaller players never became worthy of mention until the day they died.
X11 is kinda sorta more arguable, as SCO (the old one, not the jackass) did a fairly good job of selling its version of Unix to enterprises but I don't recall ever seeing one running X11, probably because it was sold as a separate add-on according to Wikipedia.
Also, "I think we've corrected the imbalance we've had in the past and now have our curriculum headed straight down the middle." I don't know if what they have is "straight down the middle", but to me, any correction the other way is a good thing after 140 years of liberal guidance.
Not really. Thing is, you're assuming these "liberals" that "injected their view" previously were far-left extremists. They weren't even close. In fact, by most of the world's recognition they were at best "mild conservatives" so a correction the other way would've been to push a true liberal agenda, this turn towards hardcore fundamentalism only exacerbates the problem that already existed beforehand.
In most of the world I'm categorized as a right-wing conservative, yet in the US I'd likely be labeled a "capitalism-hating socialist" for my political views. You there have Mussolini in one side and Hitler on the other, the middle ground between them is still fascism. What you need to look for is a middle ground on a *global* scale, but that lies to the left of your left, not to your right.
and Nero (If you paid for it, your a sucker) was very cute too!
If you paid for a Mac, you're a bigger sucker than he could ever be.
I have nothing at all against Linux. I am simply a realist. I have continuously used Linux since I first installed SLS in 1992. I have deployed thousands of Linux servers and have tried every single distribution that people thought could be a real desktop alternative.
And I've developed a cure for cancer in my basement. Sorry, but your post stink of Apple-zealot hipster so unless you start showing some actual knowledge befitting your alleged experience, that's exactly how I (and everbody else) will see you as.
The problem isn't the FOSS code, its everything else. Compare, for instance, the steps required to have your Windows machine look like OSX vs that of having your OSX machine look like Windows.
The reason most people call OSX a closed system is that, to get something as customizable as your average Windows or Linux install you need to throw away everything that makes OSX OSX, so in the end you're left with only a half-assed BSD fork you had to pay $129 for.
Yes I am a scientist and understand the science.
Mind telling us, then, which field do you have a degree in, which specialty, and from which university? just curious.
Google says it holds certain patents on the VP8 video codec that is part of WebM but there's no assurance that Google's patents are the only patents required. What about patents that third parties could assert? While it appears to be a nice gesture if a major player releases software on open source terms, it's imperative to perform a well-documented patent clearance.
I may offend you for saying this, but... please stop spreading FUD. The phrasing of your post implies (and at times outright states) that this situation is exclusive to VP8. It's not. Everything, and I do mean everything non-trivial is liable for patent infringement. VP8, h.264, the Linux kernel, MS Outlook and even the presentation app I'm writing in my spare time, as long as it's large enough to be patentable there's a good chance that somebody, somewhere, holds a patent similar enough to it that a technophobe judge would judge in their favor in a patent lawsuit.
Asking for Google or any other OSS company to perform a "patent clearance" is simply unrealistic, and the part of your post that stinks of FUD the most. If you want (as many of us do) the safety of mind of knowing that your work will never be threatened by a patent troll with an axe to grind, there's only one path for you regardless of the technology you choose: support the efforts of those trying to abolish software patents, in the US and anywhere else they may pop up. Otherwise you'll always be at risk.
Unfortunately the patent system is so broken there just is no way to authoritatively declare anything patent-free.
There's two ways: one, make your work trivial enough to be unpatentable ("Hello, World!" for instance). Second, build your product then wait 20 years before publishing it to ensure that it is, by itself, prior art for any valid patent over it.
Of course neither is a practical choice in the real world, but then again MPEG-LA didn't pay their senators for nothing.
They didn't forget, the users made them change their minds.
If you want a lightweight and fast browser, there's always Arora and Midori.
Ya this attitude of "Something should have tons of features but no bloat," has always confused me. There seem to be far too many technical people who think that you should be able to have software with all the features in the world, yet that takes up only a tiny sliver of memory and disk space.
Well, that's because you're misunderstanding their argument slightly. What they want, actually, is "a program that has all the features I need and none I don't".
Which is a perfectly reasonable request, of course, as long as you're willing to write it for yourself. People are quick to forget that if you stick four people in a room for half an hour you'll end up with five different opinions, and the same happens when trying to decide which features are "necessary" and which ones are "bloat".
Personally, my needs are fairly spartan so I generally prefer light tools over heavier ones, which is why I've been using Midori and Arora for browsing rather than Firefox or Chrome. My ideal browser, of course, would drop support for HTML3.2 and previous and be a *lot* more anal about invalid HTML but then again I'm too lazy to code it myself so I make do with what I have.